Konrad and Alexandra (pdf) - Rolf Gross

Dato laughed, "As if you had any talent for that. Would you feel like teaching a course in
my department at the university? We are lacking good talent."
Alexandra confessed that Melikishvili had suggested exactly that to Konrad. She had to
think about this proposal, in principle she would like to teach, but she had, unlike the men, to
care for her family too, cooking, sewing, shopping, and the like.
Christine had prepared an elaborate German dinner, with Konrad in mind, she said.
Alexandra was moved by the beautiful decor Christine had lavished on her table. It reminded
her of the dinner at Friedrich von Bredow’s house: table silver, beautiful china, a white table
cloth, and flowers everywhere.
Christine was a quiet brunette, open and unaffected. She had worked as a nurse in the
hospital where Dato had spent his clinical years. Alexandra had already liked her when they
met on the boat. A good, reliable woman for Dato. When they had met for the first time,
Christine had worried about living in Tbilisi. She seemed to have settled down well.
Christine asked, "Dato told me you left everything behind in St. Petersburg, did you
leave in such a hurry?"
Suddenly Alexandra did not know how to describe to her what St. Petersburg had been
like in the past four years, her gruesome work, the famine of the last year, the shooting in the
streets, and the demonstrators. Here they lived in deepest peace time.
"We only took what we could carry across the mountains on our backs. It must seem
crazy to you, but we went on foot from Vladikavkas to Ananuri."
A nagging doubt overcame Alexandra, had they left prematurely in a panic? From the
vantage point of this cultivated table, the entire last three weeks appeared surreal and
hysterical. Had they all gone crazy?
But then she remembered the walk home after Masquerade, the shootings, the
protesters demanding bread and the head of the emperor, the police with drawn sabers
chasing people down Nevsky. The tense night with Vladimir after they came home when she
had made the decision to leave. How could she explain that without losing her composure?
She realized she could not. They would say, ‘how horrible, we had no idea,’ but the
existential fears, the rumors, the ominous presence of the Okhrana, the anti-German threats
and denunciations, the jeering masses, yes, especially those, they simply could not imagine.
Dato and Christine walked them halfway home through the sleeping town. Konrad was
reminded that this had been the custom after such evenings in his German university years.
When Alexandra hugged Christine and thanked her, Alexandra broke down in tears.
"Forgive me, it was so wonderful with you, we have not had an evening or walked home like
this for four years. Don’t worry, I am all right, the past just overwhelmed me. Thank you, thank
you, both of you."
Konrad took Alexandra’s arm. "I finally see that your decision to bring us here was the
right one."
As expected, Javakhashvili offered Konrad a position, for the time being at the
Gymnasium, as professor of botany and the natural sciences. When Javakhashvili and
Melikishvili finally interviewed Alexandra she cleverly expressed her interest in a part-time
teaching job, but told them that for now she would prefer to work as Dato Ortaladze’s dputy-
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